Televising Memory: The Tenth Anniversary of 9/11

93 Pages·2014·0.32 MB·English

by  Jennifer Plumlee

Claremont Colleges
Scholarship @ Claremont
Scripps Senior Theses Scripps Student Scholarship
2012
Televising Memory: The Tenth Anniversary of
9/11
Jennifer Plumlee
Scripps College
Recommended Citation
Plumlee, Jennifer, "Televising Memory: The Tenth Anniversary of 9/11" (2012).Scripps Senior Theses.Paper 34.
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/34
This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Scripps Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been
accepted for inclusion in Scripps Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact
[email protected].
TELEVISING MEMORY: THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF
9/11

by

JENNIFER PLUMLEE

SUBMITTED TO SCRIPPS COLLEGE IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE OF BACHLOR OF ARTS

PROFESSOR MATT DELMONT
PROFESSOR JULIE LISS

APRIL 13, 2012
TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………. 3- 24

CHAPTER 2: UNITY……………………………………………………... 25- 41

CHAPTER 3: SURVIVAL AND RE-GROWTH…………………………. 42- 58

CHAPTER 4: HEROISM AND SUPERIORITY…………………………. 59- 75

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION…………………………………………….. 76- 88

ENDNOTES……………………………………………………………...... 89- 92

2
Introduction

Background: September 11, 2001 and the Role of Television

September 11, 2001 remains one of the most tragic and meaningful events in
American history. Suicide bombers associated al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group,
hijacked four planes targeted for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon, and the White House. Without precedent or preparation, reactions to the
attacks unfolded with astonishment and sadness. In New York City, fire fighters, police
officers, and civilians sought to rescue the people who were inside the Towers in the
midst of unfamiliarity with such a large-scale crisis. With 2,819 deaths resulting from the
attacks, the tragedy of 9/11 became a national focus.1 The symbolic targets of the White
House, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center implicated the entire nation in an
experience of attack on American life, culture, and policy. As new information, images,
and video poured into news channels, Americans turned on the television to digest the
footage and attempt to grasp the scale of this crisis. For most people, the television was
the sole source of updates and information on the attacks and thus the news became the
principle form of understanding and consumption about the events of 9/11. Ten years
later, television is again the principle source of 9/11 information. The tenth anniversary
of 9/11 was memorialized and remembered through television specials. The reliance on
media sources during the events of 9/11 translated to a similar reliance on media during
the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The images, stories, people, and emotions captured by
television sources during and after 9/11 have been re-charged, re-imagined, and re-told
by media sources during the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Thus, the fundamental role of
television in creating the memory and history of 9/11 is paramount to understanding the
process of national memory formation.
3
On the morning of September 11, information about the attacks arrived primarily
through televised media sources. The first attack on the North Tower occurred at 8:46 am
ET and was quickly witnessed by people all across the nation on news channels using
civilian footage of the plane crashing into the Tower. Although no one was completely
sure if the crash was an accident or a purposeful attack, the second plane crash into the
Pentagon at 9:37 am and the third plan crash into the South Tower at 10:03 am ET
confirmed that a deliberate attack had been organized and executed.2 Because television
is a unique medium that allows for a constant flow of information and is accessible in
most homes and/or public spaces, it served an important purpose on 9/11 to distribute a
far-reaching message of crisis and tragedy to the nation. In fact, even federal employees
utilized television sources that morning as the primary stream of information about the
attacks without the availability of developed intelligence.3 In this way, television
channels became a platform for comprehending 9/11. They also served as a uniting
experience as all Americans turned to news sources and acquired the same images, facts,
and presentations as every other American that relied on the same sources for
information. Although online news sources and radio programs provided additional
outlets for information gathering, the visual nature of the tragedy elevated television as
they key source for minute-to-minute updates and analysis. The role of television on the
morning of 9/11, and in the subsequent days, was paramount in forming initial thoughts
and understandings about the attacks and the consequences that followed.
National Memory and the 10th Anniversary of 9/11
On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, television performed a similarly important role by
providing a medium for collective national memory formation. National memory, for the
purpose of this research, is defined as a united remembrance of an event or experience
4
that impacts a nation as a whole, speaks to national interests and values, and provides a
foundation for placement of the event or experience in a national history. At the same
time, national memory is key to individual or personal memory as national memory
informs the facts and understandings that underscore an individual’s recollections of an
event or experience. National memory is engaged when they have touched individual
lives on a local level and at the same time have transcended personal connections to
affect the general tone and mood of a nation. National memory complicates personal
memory by adding national interests to an individual remembrance of an event. The
nature of a collective memory suggests that by focusing on particular interpretations of
events or experiences, national goals, character, and position are reaffirmed.4 In this way,
the purpose of putting forth a certain way of remembering can be motivated by nationally
relevant social, political, and economic aims. If an event or experience is memorialized in
a specific and collective manner that serves particular intentions, the ways in which that
event or experience is remembered come to include produced interpretations that are
framed as fact. Thus, national memory is also inextricably linked to history. The way in
which something is memorialized on a grand scale impacts the way that event or
experience will be told through history. The creation of a national memory therefore
takes on greater meaning, as the formed memory becomes the basis for how people recall
and retell the historical importance of the event or experience being memorialized. In this
way, national memory actually becomes the framework for personal memory as a
collective sense of remembering provides the foundation for the facts and interpretations
of the event or experience.
While national memory identifies the importance of remembering events or
experiences for their personal as well as national ramifications, the formation of national
5
memory is inherently problematic. The process of producing memory involves evaluating
facts, images, experiences, and stories about an event or experience. Through this
process, certain aspects of the event or experience are inevitably forgotten. In order to
produce a memory that serves national political, social, or economic aims, the facts of an
event or experience must be remembered and told in such a way that these aims are
supported.5 Thus, if national memory formation relies on forgetting, the memory is a
representation of a particular myth in service of national aims rather than a true
recollection of unadulterated facts. In this way, personal remembrances of national
occurrences become mediums through which national myths are evoked and preserved.
Television and the Formation of National Memory
Television plays a significant role in creating and spreading the seeds of
national memory. The media formed the basis for information collection and distribution
during the unfolding events of 9/11. Because the majority of Americans could not
observe the destruction of the attacks or witness the efforts to deal with the devastation in
New York City and at the Pentagon, television served as the medium of observation. In
this way, the media became a storehouse for the factual representation of 9/11 material.
During the tenth anniversary, a similar reliance on media positioned television specials to
transmit national memory. While personal memories of the morning of 9/11 may have
weakened over the past 10 years, by replaying footage and images of that day, television
sources provided Americans with renewed access to 9/11. Thus, the position of the media
to distribute this information exemplifies the importance of television in forming personal
memories of 9/11. At the same time, the unified circulation of nationally televised
specials suggests that national memory was being distributed and infused into personal
memory as well. By presenting specials about 9/11 on national news channels and other
6
national channels such as The History Channel and PBS, television allowed for the
formation of personal memories that were also demonstrative of a collective memory.
However, news and other specials produced specifically for the tenth anniversary of 9/11
invariably created a particular narrative that served specific goals. During the process of
production, the television specials formulated the facts, images, and stories of 9/11 into a
cohesive narrative. By highlighting certain aspects and leaving out others that did not fit
into the narrative, these specials forged a national memory that is produced. In other
words, the nature of creating a narrative, or an engaging story for a television program,
involves manipulating the facts into a cohesive story rather than simply relating unfiltered
footage and information. If the media provides a limited framework to remember and
Americans are reliant on their presentation to construct personal memories, then the
ability to form individual memory is undermined by forgetting certain facts and
highlighting others. Therefore, manufactured representations of 9/11 become personal
memories and, in a greater sense, a collective, national memory.
The tenth anniversary of 9/11 provides a unique opportunity to observe the
formation of national memory- making. Anniversaries of monumental events in
American history offer time or reflection. With the passage of time, major events are
remembered in how those events have impacted the American life and national outlooks
and actions. The formation and propagation of national memory about those events
therefore peaks at anniversaries as heightened moments of attention to those events. In
this renewed state of reflection and commemoration, national events become remembered
in ways that serve current motives and circumstances.6 Because anniversaries are
commemorated outside the immediate aftermath of an event, they are situated in different
national climates. Thus, the anniversary itself, and the way in which the event is
7
remembered, comes to represent the long- term impacts of the event more than the initial
memories of and reactions to the event. National memory creation at anniversaries
responds to remembrance of events in service of current national goals derived from the
event’s effects. In the case of 9/11, the tenth anniversary is the first major anniversary of
the terrorist attacks. Although previous anniversaries, such as the fifth anniversary, are
significant, the tenth anniversary is the first opportunity to gain true perspective on 9/11
in terms of how the consequences have played out in a long term way. This historic
moment offers the first major opportunity to evaluate the way 9/11 has impacted
American life and policy in a long term way. National memory of 9/11 is just starting to
form in the wake of social and political consequences directly linked to collective
reactions to 9/11. By evaluating the ways in which this tenth anniversary is being
remembered, the process of national memory creation unravels. Specifically, the forms of
commemoration of 9/11 and the way in which narratives of 9/11 are being retold will
reveal what kinds of memories are needed to support current and on-going consequences
of 9/11 in American foreign and domestic policy. If national memory serves current
national goals, then the formulation of national memory actually exemplifies the role the
commemorated event plays in modern issues.
To understand the process of national memory creation for 9/11, television
specials remembering 9/11 provide a foundation for analysis. Around the tenth
anniversary, major television channels provided specials and documentaries.
Approximately forty major, nationally televised specials aired from the end of August up
through the 11th of September 2011 on traditional news channels, including NBC, ABC,
CBS, CNN, and Fox, as well as on entertainment channels dedicated to specific forms of
entertainment and education, such as HBO, PBS, Nickelodeon, The History Channel,
8
National Geographic, TLC, and Discovery Channel.7 For the purpose of this research,
eleven specials, taken from the above-mentioned networks, provide the basis for analysis.
These specials are particularly relevant because they represent programs aired on the
most wide-viewed news stations, represent a range of political perspectives, and speak to
different age groups and interests. In addition, the eleven specials discussed come from
channels that continue to provide public access to the specials through purchase or the
Internet. By selecting specials that are still available to viewers after the original air- date,
this research relies on narratives that initiated national memory on the tenth anniversary
and carry on distribution of that memory forward. Thus, these specials remain the most
continually accessible specials and the narratives they produce are likewise the most
accessible. While the specials cover different angles of remembrance of 9/11, they each
served specific goals of national memory and provided clear directions of
commemoration. The wide accessibility of television translates to wide distribution of
these specials, and the national narratives they produce.
The Function and Structure of 9/11 Memory
The national memory of 9/11 produced through television specials involves the
creation of a myth about American character that serves current social and political
purposes. Despite the stylistic and content differences amongst the specials, certain
themes remain consistent. These themes manipulate the facts of 9/11 into a cohesive
narrative about how 9/11 has impacted American life, culture, and people. Specifically,
the television programs frame 9/11, and the consequences of 9/11, in a way that
celebrates American superiority, strength, and perseverance in the face of tragedy and
aggression. The terrorist attacks by nature revealed a weakness in American security and
forced America into the role of the attacked. This role contrasts sharply to a telling of
9